


The Ghost of a Bleak Future

by flirtoptionthree



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game), Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Dark Side Jedi Consular, Gen, Pre-Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-01-25 20:34:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18582097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flirtoptionthree/pseuds/flirtoptionthree
Summary: Darth Maul meets his first Jedi----3600+ years in the past.





	The Ghost of a Bleak Future

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gammarad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/gifts).



Maul struggled back to consciousness. It was a familiar feeling, if not a welcome one. He stayed limp, kept his eyes closed, absorbed his circumstances without giving away his awareness.  
  
His head was being cradled by something warm and soft. The rest of his body was too numb to feel what he was lying on. The air was still, heavy. He could hear deep, regular breathing immediately above and the scuff of someone light-footed and restless to his left. Beyond that he could sense. Nothing.  
  
No.  
  
It was the Dark Side, so pervasive it was as though he’d been swallowed by a void. He couldn’t even feel his own self.  
  
He reached. Beyond it—  
  
“Stop,” a dispassionate voice said, too close. Maul twisted away from it reflexively and found himself dropped onto rocky ground. Now he knew he was outside, even if the price had been revealing he was awake. The sky was a bright, sickly, alien orange, partially obscured by the gnarled branches and leaves of a forest.  
  
He tried to roll over, to get his arms and legs under himself. They responded sluggishly, like there was a disconnect between his will and his limbs. Maul stilled at the sensation.  
  
“Alive,” another voice observed from his left—the one who’d been pacing, “disappointing.”  
  
“I told you he was,” the first voice said, chiding.  
  
“Could fix that,” Maul heard as he was hoisted up by the elaborately garbed twi’lek suddenly at his back.  
  
“Let’s not be hasty,” the twi’lek, the first voice, said. Maul sensed—cold. Impatience. Order. Power. A Jedi.  
  
It was too soon for this. Maul wasn’t ready.  
  
“Are you in there, Sith,” the Jedi murmured into his ear, “or have we by some grace managed to render you mute?”  
  
Maul bared his teeth, helpless and seething.  
  
“Broke him,” he heard.  
  
The Jedi hummed in agreement and propped him against something so he was upright—a tree. He could see the other speaker now—another twi’lek. One pointing a huge, ancient looking rifle at his chest—a soldier? This one was angry, but not at him. A hazy, directionless anger.  
  
Knelt in front of him, the Jedi took him by a horn and tilted his head back. It was the same motion, done with the same cool disinterest Master Sidious affected and it had Maul submitting out of reflex.  
  
“Your throat has healed,” the Jedi said, not to Maul, “fascinating.”  
  
“Cut it again,” the soldier suggested.  
  
The hand on his horn moved to grip his neck. It had Maul keeping motionless for a different reason. After a moment of tense observation he was released. His head fell forward to his chest before he could stop it, leaving him dizzy. He wrenched it back up with disproportionate effort.  
  
“There’s nothing wrong with your vocal tract,” the Jedi said. Then, with annoyance, “Say something.”  
  
Maul swallowed.  
  
“Like him better like this,” the soldier said.  
  
The Jedi had recognized him as Sith, and hadn’t killed him.  
  
“While I agree, if he’s insensible it won’t go well for the Republic. And he can’t be killed.”  
  
Whatever this was, Maul couldn’t do anything about it. And the Jedi needed him intact.  
  
“My body,” Maul rasped, “it doesn’t want to move.”  
  
He could feel the Jedi’s focus laser in on him. It overwhelmed even the unceasing burn of the Dark Side around them: impassive, blinding, “Ah, I see. When we closed the gate it knocked your spirit free. I called it back, but it seems it has not settled correctly.”  
  
His spirit.  
  
Maul rolled his head down to study his limp hands. These were his hands: his tattoos curled around his wrists and between his fingers. There was a brand visible on the left, the symbol too old and scarred to be recognizable. He was wearing a signet ring, the symbol similar to that of the Republic’s seal, but more angular, slightly different. The nails on the ends of the fingers were trimmed and painted, neat: these were not his hands.  
  
He willed them to move. After a moment, the fingers flexed.  
  
His hands, and not his hands.

“What is this,” Maul hissed.  
  
Then, something impacted with his chest.

///

  
The Sith dragged along between them, a useless sack of meat.  
  
“Easier to kill him,” Zenith complained. Or they could just leave it as-is. One Sith was as good as another. At least whatever was riding around in the Sith now knew how to keep its tongue and couldn’t move much.  
  
“We already tried that and it didn’t work,” his Jedi said.  
  
Zenith smirked at the memory, lekku twitching. Shooting Imperials was always satisfying. Even ghost Imperials who couldn’t feel it. And the outraged horror that had stolen over its face was much more appropriate than the previous occupant’s reaction.  
  
His Jedi flicked a look at him. Zenith couldn’t tell what it was, bound Lekku offering no clues, “I’m not going to keep carrying a body around when it should be perfectly capable of walking on its own. I am loathe to admit it, but we need outside help.”  
  
That meant they were going to contact the Sith’s people. It made sense. They knew more about the Sith’s spirit-walking. It was the next rational step. Zenith’s good mood was instantly ruined, probably his Jedi’s intention. He was evidently in a bad mood, and he liked to share his ill-humor around.  
  
But— “This is a strange situation. If they don’t have a lead?”  
  
“We’ll get the ghost to fake it for the check-in,” his Jedi snapped, and dropped his half of the Sith. He sped ahead. At that pace he would beat Zenith back to the shuttle handily.  
  
Zenith watching him go, considering. His Jedi was more upset than he’d realized. Zenith had thought he’d been interested. This was, he’d learned, the best of all emotions for a Jedi to be. But he was worried instead.  
  
There wasn’t anything Zenith could do about it without more information. Leaving him alone was the best course of action.  
  
He hoisted the Sith easily over a shoulder and followed doggedly along.  
  
Halfway back and well after his Jedi was out of sight, the Sith stirred. It was a more natural movement than his previous awakening. Zenith resigned himself to being harassed for the next stretch of trip. Cedrax called it flirting, but it amounted to the same thing. It was amusing to watch them go at each-other, but Zenith didn’t like it directed at himself or his Jedi.  
  
Instead, he was kneed in the ribs. The Sith scrabbled for his neck, but he’d been stupid and given himself away with the first move. Zenith flipped him over, dropping him to the ground on his back.  
  
By the time he’d unholstered his rifle the Sith was already gone, disappeared into the trees.  
  
Zenith sighted into them. There was no movement.  
  
What to do. He could wait, but not indefinitely. He could leave, but they needed the Sith. He could shoot until he hit something. That plan had its appeal, but if the Sith was recovered enough to move freely blind fire wasn’t likely to do much good. The Sith wasn’t a thing that could be threatened or blackmailed, was totally immune to pain. He could be reasoned with.  
  
If it was even the Sith out there.  
  
This was not Zenith’s specialty.  
  
“We don’t have time for this,” Zenith reminded him.  
  
Nothing.  
  
He called his Jedi.  
  
“Yes,” he answered. He sounded better. The signal was clear, he was definitely on the shuttle. He was back to his neutral Jedi face.  
  
“The Sith’s awake,” Zenith told him, “—he ran off into the woods.”  
  
“That isn’t the Sith,” his Jedi said.  
  
Zenith ended the visual function and clipped the comm. near his head so he could keep speaking to it, “He attacked me. I lost him.”  
  
There was a moment of silence. Zenith resumed his aim at the trees.  
  
“Reviving in the body would have settled it better,” his Jedi finally concluded, “so now it can move naturally.”  
  
That wasn’t good news.  
  
“Did it seem rational?” his Jedi asked. The answer was obvious, so Zenith didn’t. “Tell it that the planet is not stable. When it’s at equilibrium it is hot enough for lava flow continuously over its surface. Unnatural Darkness has destroyed that equilibrium and it could break apart at any moment. It is uninhabited, we are the only way off. We want it alive and in good condition, but if it doesn’t come with us we’re leaving it here. To die."  
  
Zenith called into the trees, “Hear that?”  
  
He felt something stir at his back and dodged out of the way in time to avoid a clawed strike to the throat. He moved but it wouldn’t let him get range, continued closing as he retreated. This was not ideal.  
  
“If you kill my— Zenith, I’ll leave you here, too. I don’t have the patience to train a dumb animal into civilized behavior,” he heard from the comm..  
  
That made it stop, crouched low in the dirt and ready to spring. Zenith kept a bead on it as he backed up to a more comfortable distance.  
  
“Who are you,” it growled. Like before, it was jarring. It was same voice, but more. More rage, more confusion. It was seething with emotion. The Sith was bored. Infuriating. Not this— “Where am I?”  
  
“Mustafar,” Zenith answered.  
  
“We are allies,” his Jedi said, suddenly solicitous. Even with his submissive Jedi voice Zenith thought it would be a hard-sell.  
  
“No,” it denied, and shifted. He could tell it was going to bolt for the trees again.  
  
Zenith didn’t move. He would prefer if they left it. He knew it would bother his Jedi, abandoning an enemy to die but not able to confirm. Zenith didn’t think even this Sith would survive the destruction of a planet, but he wasn’t paranoid about supernatural Force occurrences like his Jedi.  
  
His Jedi was the one to stop it, voice tinny in the comm.. He’d moved away from the communications array, “You didn’t possess him intentionally, so you can’t mean to be here either. We want our Sith back in his body, and you want out of it. We have a shared goal.”  
  
It looked away from Zenith and down at its hands, clenching them into fists. Unclenching them and pressing them to the ground. Zenith waited.  
  
Eventually it stood up, loose all over. It had better posture than the Sith. When it came toward him it walked like a trained fighter. Zenith kept his rifle trained on it.  
  
“Go first,” he invited, “I’ll tell you where.”  
  
It didn’t argue, walking ahead of him to the shuttle. Neither of them spoke during the trip, it didn’t need directions.  
  
When they arrived his Jedi wasn’t waiting, but the ramp was down. It was clear they were expected, that he knew they were there. The ramp drew up and the hatch closed behind them when they entered.  
  
The entrance to the cockpit was closed. The door was locked when Zenith tested it. Smart. That left him alone with the thing in the Sith. This wasn’t the most efficient use of their resources, Zenith knew he would lose here in the small passenger compartment if it tried to kill him again. His Jedi would have been better able to fend it off.  
  
This was what it was. He took a post by the closed door and kept his rifle at the ready.  
  
It ignored him to prowl around the far side of the compartment, examining everything from the screws to the upholstery. It didn’t flinch on the takeoff but it got down to press its ear to the deck. Bizarre.  
  
It was almost in character for the body.  
  
They docked with the cruiser without incident. The Sith—it had taken up a spot in the corner, where it could watch Zenith. They both looked over when the cockpit opened, a quick glance from Zenith, a full shift of attention from it.  
  
His Jedi emerged and ignored them both, striding down the ramp and out of the shuttle without looking back. Zenith gestured with his rifle that they were to follow and it complied without a word.  
  
Zenith decided firmly that he vastly preferred this inhabitant to the original.  
  
“What are you called,” he asked. They hadn’t already been greeted by the crew, that meant they’d been warned off. One of the more sociable ones could have pried some information out of their guest. He knew his Jedi wouldn’t ask. Jedi had hang-ups about identity. Zenith understood that he had them too, but his political work had made him much better at meaningless small-talk.  
  
That had it stopping in its tracks, and Zenith backed up to keep the distance between them. Ahead of them his Jedi had also halted, head tilted with interest so blatant nothing could disguise it.  
  
It bit its lips, a nervous gesture Zenith had never seen on the Sith, “Darth Maul.”  
  
“So you _are_ a Sith,” his Jedi said, “I wondered, when you didn’t display any particular aptitude with the Force. I thought I’d dropped some poor blind fool into a Sith’s body. Can you imagine the horror. What a relief that this isn’t the case.”  
  
Zenith backed up further and got his rifle up.  
  
“I’m not to use the _force_ ,” it said, low, “my training is not complete.”  
  
This seemed unlikely. Zenith had met acolytes on Balmorra, it had been one of the Empire’s recruiting grounds during their occupation. They sent untrained, unprepared children up against the hostile, mutated wildlife and dragged the survivors to some off-planet Sith Academy if they showed promise. From what he’d observed, that promise consisted entirely of raw Force power.  
  
“You’re an apprentice,” his Jedi deduced, “ _Darth_ Maul.”  
  
Darth Maul nodded.  
  
His Jedi made a sweeping gesture, inviting it to walk with him. It was a move Zenith had adopted from him. He often used it to express that his conversation partner was an equal, “Tell me about your Master.”  
  
“No,” it said. It backed a pace toward Zenith, “I will not betray my Master.”  
  
“That’s a strange reaction,” his Jedi said, “but I suppose this is a strange situation. Tell me where you’re from, then.”  
  
It remained still.  
  
His Jedi made a little hum of consideration, “I’m not going to fight you for a solution. You’re no Dark Lord, wandering around beyond death and possessing unwary vessels. I won’t help you if you don’t assuage my curiosity. Where were you before you woke up in the wrong body?”  
  
It stepped back toward Zenith again, but he could see how it’d tensed for violence. “I won’t betray my Master,” it repeated.  
  
“So don’t,” his Jedi said airily and turned to walk away, “You’ll be the first Sith not to.”  
  
“I was on Mustafar,” it said. Zenith revised his estimate of its intelligence down a peg.  
  
His Jedi made a beckoning motion without turning around, and Darth Maul slunk up to meet him. It was stooping to make itself smaller, even though the Sith wasn't large to begin with. They resumed their progress toward the guest quarters, Zenith once more alert and trained on Darth Maul’s back.  
  
“We were on Mustafar,” his Jedi prompted.  
  
“No,” Darth Maul said, “I was on Mustafar, before. It’s as you described. A training facility at the base of a volcano.”  
  
“What happened before you woke up,” his Jedi asked after a pause.  
  
“Nothing,” Darth Maul said, “I blinked.”  
  
“What year is it.”  
  
That one gave Zenith pause.  
  
Darth Maul answered, and it wasn’t with a sequence Zenith recognized.  
  
“Tell me about the Sith and the Jedi,” his Jedi demanded, intent. They’d reached the stealth holding cell, a room richly adorned but completely secure. Zenith approved. His Jedi lead Darth Maul in. Zenith approved of this less, but capitulated when he was waved away.  
  
He should contact the Sith’s cohort. He didn't want to, but with his Jedi occupied it was not a task he could put off.

  
///

“The future,” his Jedi announced, slamming onto the bridge.  
  
“We have been supplied with a tracker frequency for the Sith’s spirit,” Zenith told him. It did not speak well of the Sith that he needed his minions to keep track of his location in this way. Zenith hadn’t even known it was possible.  
  
Then he registered his Jedi’s words.  
  
“It’s from the future?”  
  
“Oh yes,” his Jedi said with uncharacteristic enthusiasm, “it’s all very horrible. The Empire has been absorbed by the Republic. The Sith have dwindled down to a single line, they are entirely consumed with revenge.”  
  
His lekku were visibly trying to curl. As always, they were bound together at the tips. When Zenith had once expressed his concern, he’d justified it as sensible for combat. Nothing else about his dress was sensible. Zenith thought it more likely it was to keep him unreadable, all their natural expressive movements handily stifled by a single ribbon. Effective, if monstrous.  
  
“That’s good,” Zenith said. He could have done without the absorption of the Empire, but as long as he didn’t have to live to work with Imperials, it was good news that it was destroyed.  
  
“No,” his Jedi said, “No, there’s a reason why their Empire dwindles without the uniting pressure of the Emperor. No, culled down to the fanatical, united behind a common cause, all their ambition bent toward the destruction of the Order—this is not good news. We must resolve this immediately. I’ve expressed sympathy to gain the full cooperation of our guest, so don’t ruin that for me.”  
  
“What about the Emperor,” Zenith asked. They’d been working with the Sith and the Empire against him for a year. Zenith was dissatisfied with the alliance, as efficient as the Sith was in eliminating ghostly threats.  
  
“This takes priority,” his Jedi said rapidly. He was practically trembling. It reminded Zenith of how he'd been during the War, “Don’t talk to Darth Maul. Leave him in the guest room. How does this frequency work. No, don’t show me. Just do it. We can't leave the path open, it could be disastrous. I have to contact the Council. Don't interrupt me.”  
  
He swept out of the room as quickly as he’d come.  
  
Zenith returned to the helm. The tracker was supposed to be two dots that displayed the Sith’s body and the Sith’s spirit. It should have been both simple and easy to use, a prospect Cedrax would have been horrified by.

In reality, there was one bright dot on top of the ship's location and a series of faint, flickering points speckled over the galactic map. Some of them were on Mustafar, overlapping but still barely visible. From there, they dotted an irregular line to the center of the galaxy, parsecs apart, disappearing and reappearing like faulty equipment struggling to maintain a charge.

He pointed the ship toward the Core.

///

  
High over Coruscant, they overlapped the dot with the brightest, most stable point. There had been the sounds of a disagreement from air traffic control about parking a ship in the atmosphere, but it being the Barsen’thor's ship had overridden the protests, eventually.  
  
“Stand there,” his Jedi said, and pushed Darth Maul a step to the right, “hold still.”  
  
Zenith came behind it and drew its head back. Nobody stood still to get their throat cut, not even when they knew they would come back from it.  
  
Darth Maul shifted in his hold, uneasy.  
  
“You’ll save the Sith,” it said to itself, or to Zenith’s Jedi.  
  
His Jedi touched the dagger to skin and drew across it easily. He’d done it before, “Don’t worry. I’ll eliminate all of them. Nothing left to poison the well, so to speak.”  
  
It made Darth Maul thrash once, but it was too late for it to do anything. Zabrak hearts worked quickly. His Jedi had ducked out of the way of any blood, also practiced in this maneuver. The Sith was a very good ritual sacrifice. Better than Darth Maul, because he didn't care to move.  
  
Zenith dropped the body and pulled out the cuffs he’d picked up because he’d known his Jedi wouldn’t resist a vindictive dig at the end. If this failed he wanted the consequences secured by durasteel.  
  
His Jedi didn’t comment while he worked, but he crouched down in interest to watch the wound he’d inflicted heal and it brushed him against Zenith’s side. He’d halfway finished threading a chain through the cuffs at the Sith’s ankles before he was interrupted.  
  
“Oh, it’s you,” the Sith said suddenly, loathsome drawl once again intact. He didn’t seem to notice Zenith’d been in the middle of bolting him to the floor, “you would not _believe_ the week I’ve had.”

**Author's Note:**

> Darth Maul wakes up in the senate tower and a lot of stuff is on fire.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Shadow of a Storied Past](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19814857) by [Gammarad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/pseuds/Gammarad)




End file.
